, 1887-06-12
HOW NOVELS ARE MADE.
The Process OF CompositIon-How Ideas
Are Picked U~p-Siiuations.

The Process of CompositIon-How Ideas
Are Picked Up-situations.
AS far as the authors know, the process
of composition is much the same always,
though u few indulge in eccentric habits.
They pick up ideas as they go on, and in
his new letters we learn how Mr.. Thack-
cray selected notions for '.Pendennis,"
from his daily life, even while that work
was coming out in monthly numbers.
Nor do any authors know exactly what
they arc going to saywhen they sit down
TO write. All pens, though the pen
makers are unaware of it, have familiar
spirits resident in them, which whisper
iIeas to the author as he goes on. He
never dreamed of these ideas till he had the
magical pen in his hand, the pen muir
nuns them, and he accepts them, and
often Qike T~hackeray when he made
Becky admire Rawdon for beating Lord
Steyne) he wonders at his own clever
ness. 1t IS not his own, it is given to
him from without, he feels. and that is
why he can never explain chow it is
done" Or, If this theory of the lutin Of
the pen be secuted, W. suppose that the
brain gets heated, excited, borne above
itself, and SO when the brain cools down,
the author becomes q commonplace NOR
tai, and forgots how he got into fairy
land. Therefore, they never can explain
how their works are written, though,
perhaps, they could often trace back, If
they cared, the steps of the association Of
ideas.
Apparently, novelists sometimes begin
with q set of characters, and think over
them till they begin to move and act,
as the table 10Y if people sit round it
with their fingers on it. In that way,
perhaps, Vanity Fair" was invented.
~Thackeray hal q Becky II lbs mind, and
he composed Emmy out of II collection of
living models. Then, perhaps, he set to
work wondering how these ladies would
act and react on each others fortunes.
Then more queer characters-old Sir
Pitt, old Miss Crawley, the notorious
Lord Steyne and so on-inssted oil join
ing the dance. But there is no puzzle
to be explained. nc astonishing situation
to be accounted for, as in novels of the
type OF Gaboriau's.
Another mode of birth, we may CON
lecture. was that of "Bleak House
Dickens seems to have said to himself,
now lot us have q fling at some national
abuse, and he found that great, palpable
cockshy, the court of chancery, before
him. So the story had to set forth the
evils of chancery, as displayed in the sor-
rows of a set of worthy ruined people.
Then Leigh Hunt came in the authors
way, and promptly Mr.. Harold Skimpole
was devised and joined the dance, and SO
on. Probably cheap novels of murder
and mystery are written by d~evising q
strange situation, and working pack
from that to invent ways in which it
might have happened. You introduce q
gentleman who finde the fire smoking
dreadfully at breakfast. He examines
the chimney and finds in it the body,
head downward, of q lovely girl of 19.
How in the world did she get there2
You work back till you have invented a
plausible theory of the whimsical circum-
stance, AMI that theory is your novel.
Gaboriau often worked back as far as the
revolution or the edict of Nantes, if not
the crusades, before he could get room to
turn our in. And no wonder, for if
you will introduce a duke shooting ali
the company in q suburban pot house his
motives, if honorable, must be as ere
mote as the intentions of the young
lover in the story.
Any novelist can tell us things like this
about his art, just as Theophile Gautier
told some one that he wrote in red, black
and green inks to divert and cheer his
labors. "WEen you reach the sixth slip
you shall try the red ink" he would say
to himself, and found it a great comfort
as, indeed, it is. But Theophile did
not get his style from his colored inks,
nor Shakespeare his Hamlet from THE
History of Hamblet." Probably 'the
common steadfast Ounce" as Milton
says, of the period, screamed that
Shakespeare was a thief, and that any
n could plagiarize the History
of Hamblet. But the Ounce never
did so himself, nor did his friends, and
only learned people like DIR. Furnival
know even the names of these moral and
viIulent obscurities. london News.